AUSTIN — Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples grew up nearly 500 miles from the Rio Grande. That hasn’t stopped him, however, from making improved border security his signature issue.

As he barnstorms for lieutenant governor, Staples has won admirers and detractors by warning that Texas will languish in lawlessness and corruption for generations unless today’s leaders gather overwhelming military and law enforcement muscle to stop drug cartels at the river.

Some South Texas civic leaders and government officials say Staples has exaggerated the severity of border crime. If he has, though, he need not worry about offending most of the staunch conservatives who dominate GOP primaries, said Rice University professor Mark Jones.

“It has helped him solidify his credentials as someone who is working hard on an issue important to Republican primary voters,” Jones said of Staples’ three-year border push.

Staples, 50, is playing up his relative youth as he seeks to unseat incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, 68. Houston-area state Sen. Dan Patrick, 63, and Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, 67, also are contending for the No. 2 statewide job.

Staples touts himself as a new generation leader, though he rarely mentions that he’s held elective state office — in the Legislature and heading the agriculture department — for nearly 20 years. Before that, he spent three years on the City Council in his hometown of Palestine in East Texas.

Still, the age difference allows Staples to present himself to GOP voters as a future political commodity who might blunt rising Democratic stars such as Sen. Wendy Davis, San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro or state Rep. Rafael Anchia, Jones said.

“Staples has the ability to speak to younger generations in a way that none of the others candidates can,” he said.

Staples is a former farmboy, state vice president of the Future Farmers of America and an agricultural economics major at Texas A&M University. All three of his opponents come from the Houston area, so that helps negate his lack of a highly populated home base in a rapidly urbanizing state, Jones noted.

Tactically, Staples’ biggest problem may be that voters ready to deny Dewhurst a fourth term have two other options. Staples and Patterson are fighting over “people who want change but don’t want that change to be Dan Patrick,” Jones said.

In debates and television interviews, Staples has plugged his work as a House member, senator and statewide officeholder on a raft of issues: water conservation, wildfire prevention and his sponsorship of the 2005 state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

Last week, he chided a Travis County court-at-law judge for presiding over “commitment ceremonies” for same-sex couples on Valentine’s Day. Earlier, he blasted a San Antonio City anti-discrimination ordinance, saying the gay rights move “actually discriminates against those with deeply held religious views.”

Since he won a second term as agriculture commissioner four years ago, though, Staples’ prime public policy objective has been sounding the alarm about what he says is Texas’ porous border with Mexico.

In his book Broken Borders, Broken Promises, Staples traces his involvement to his work with landowner groups on measures passed in 2009 to curb abuses of government’s land-condemnation powers.

Farmers and ranchers started bringing him stories about trespassers’ cutting fences and locks — and intimidating locals, he said. Increasingly, bodies that appeared to be Mexican citizens were being found, he said.

Staples said he started investigating but “chose not to act publicly” because it was 2010 and he was running for re-election.

“Anything released during the height of a campaign would likely be dismissed as posturing,” he wrote.

This year, his GOP rivals, and especially Patterson, have said that Staples has offered simplistic remedies on immigration and border security. His six-point plan, they note, is only 45 words long.

That ignores the torrent of words and warnings Staples has unleashed since 2011.

He created a website to highlight landowners’ concerns. He squeezed his agency for $345,000 of savings, which he gave to state troopers to help place game cameras along the border to detect illegal traffic. He testified before Congress.

He commissioned a report by two retired generals that called for turning border counties into “sanitary tactical zones.” He churned out letters to President Barack Obama and, last year, his book.

Staples wants the process for visas overhauled and a guest worker program revived. But he insists that immigrants in the U.S. illegally return to their home country to apply for legal entry.

While quick to distance himself from minutemen and vigilantes, Staples says state and federal leaders need to amass at the border National Guard troops, more Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement to capture and repel drug- and human-traffickers. He wants Washington to give them spare military hardware no longer needed by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Landowners find it refreshing to see a politician act, said Tina Yturria Buford of Harlingen, a rancher and past president of the Texas Wildlife Association.

“We’ve got politicians who have good intentions. But sometimes they have difficulty executing,” she said.

Buford called the low-cost game cameras “a common-sense idea.”

“It may not lessen the traffic, but it certainly elevates the awareness of what’s going on,” she said.

McAllen police Chief Victor Rodriguez said Staples is late to the issue and “hasn’t listened to local needs.”

Rodriguez, who served as former President George W. Bush’s top parole board appointee when he was governor, scolded Staples for posting on his website photos of dead bodies on lands 60 or more miles north of the border. He said it’s likely people who died there succumbed to exposure and not foul play.

“They have used their photographs to try to insinuate that those are casualties of war on our streets here. They’re wrong,” he said.

No one, whether police chief, local politician or South Texas economic development official, is “qualified to tell a landowner who suffers repeated intrusions that he or she does not have a crisis,” he said.

Follow Robert T. Garrett on Twitter at @RobertTGarrett.

BACKGROUND: Todd Staples

Age: 50

Birthplace: Palestine

Occupation: Real estate appraiser and broker, cattle raiser

Education: Bachelor’s degree, Texas A&M University, 1984

Political career: Texas agriculture commissioner, 2007-present; state senator, 2001-2006; state House member, 1995-2000; member, Palestine City Council, 1989-1991; was mayor pro tem for part of that time.

Career: After college, Staples helped his family start a retail plant nursery and built a real estate appraisal business in Palestine. He also leased additional land for his family’s cow-calf operation and taught briefly at a local community college.

To post a comment, log into your chosen social network and then add your comment below. Your comments are subject to our Terms of Service and the privacy policy and terms of service of your social network. If you do not want to comment with a social network, please consider writing a letter to the editor.